Publications by authors named "Cassandra Dittman"

Parents play a central role in children's ongoing participation and enjoyment of sport. Despite compelling evidence that parental behaviour can undermine the quality of children's experiences in sport, little research has examined whether strategies to support parents to engage in positive sports parenting behaviour are effective. In this paper, we report two studies that had the overall aim of developing, implementing and evaluating a program designed to promote positive parental involvement and improve spectator behaviour in junior rugby league in Australia.

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Background And Aims: Simulated gambling products, like loot boxes and social casino games, contain gambling elements, but are not classified as gambling. They are available to minors, raising concerns about a "gateway effect" into gambling. This study examined the time course of young people's engagement in simulated and monetary gambling, and associations between simulated gambling and gambling problems and harm.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the normality of daily life for many children, their families, and schools, resulting in heightened levels of anxiety, depression, social isolation, and loneliness among young people. An integrated public health model of interventions is needed to address the problem and to safeguard the mental health and wellbeing of children. The Triple P - Positive Parenting Program is one system of parenting support with a strong evidence-base and wide international reach.

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Introduction: Despite the well-established importance of positive father involvement for child adjustment, father involvement tends to be much lower compared to mother involvement. Furthermore, there are few empirical studies on Chinese fathers and their involvement in parenting. Given the importance of father involvement, it is necessary to examine the factors that may facilitate or hinder Chinese father involvement in parenting.

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The study aimed to provide further evidence for the validity of the 33-item Adolescent Functioning Scale (AFS) as a parent- and adolescent-report scale of adolescent adjustment. In separate samples of parents (N = 542; 88% female) and adolescents (N = 303; 60% female), confirmatory factor analyses supported the original 4-factor structure of the AFS. Analyses produced a 28-item parent measure, and a 27-item adolescent measure.

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Simulated gambling, such as playing a virtual slot machine for points rather than money, is increasingly part of the online gaming experience for youth. This study aimed to examine (1) if youth participation in simulated gambling games is associated with participation in monetary gambling; (2) if youth participation in simulated gambling games is associated with increased risk of problematic gambling when controlling for breadth of monetary gambling (i.e.

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: Today's adolescents are growing up in a unique sociocultural climate in which gender issues are highly prominent. Alongside new ways of understanding gender identity, there are persistent gender disparities in social, health and mental health outcomes despite increasingly egalitarian views and a significant public focus on sexual assault and gender-based violence. Given gender-differentiated outcomes emerge during adolescence, it is critical to revisit factors influencing adolescent gender development.

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Online delivery of parenting support is steadily increasing, yet the factors that influence program engagement and efficacy are still understudied. This study used an integrated data analysis approach to identify family and program-related factors that influence outcomes. We combined individual data from seven published efficacy trials of the web-based version of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program.

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This paper presents two studies outlining the development and validation of a new parent- and adolescent-report measure of the parent-adolescent relationship: the Parent-Adolescent Relationship Scale (PARS). Study 1 involved an exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 256 parents of adolescents aged 11-18 years. Results produced a 21-item measure comprising three subscales, Connectedness, Shared Activities, and Hostility, each with high factor loadings (> .

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Self-regulation is a foundational skill in childhood and underpins various positive and negative outcomes throughout childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. Parents and the way they parent their children play a key role in the development of young children's self-regulatory capacity. However, there is limited evidence for the effectiveness of parenting interventions on child self-regulatory outcomes.

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This paper outlines the development and validation of the Adolescent Functioning Scale (AFS) in an Australian sample of parents of young people aged 11-18 years (N = 278). The AFS, a parent self-report measure, was designed to assess problem behavior and positive development in adolescents. Principal components analysis produced a 33-item measure comprising four subscales: Positive Development, Oppositional Defiant Behavior, Antisocial Behavior and Emotional Difficulties.

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The study was a randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of a brief and preventatively-focused parenting discussion group for dealing with disobedient behavior in preschool-aged children. Eighty-five parents with children aged between 3 and 5 years who were concerned about the noncompliant behavior of their child were recruited from Auckland, New Zealand and Brisbane, Australia. Compared to the waitlist control group (n = 40), parents in the intervention group (n = 45) reported greater improvements in disruptive child behavior, ineffective parenting practices and parenting confidence, as well as clinically significant improvements in child behavior and parenting.

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There is growing support for the large-scale implementation of parenting programs for the prevention of child behavior disorders and child maltreatment in younger children. However, there is only limited evidence on the efficacy of parenting programs in modifying risk and protective factors relating to adolescent behavior problems. This study examined the efficacy of Group Teen Triple P (GTTP), an eight-session parenting program specifically designed for parents of young adolescents.

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The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program is owned by the University of Queensland (UQ). The University through its main technology transfer company UniQuest Pty Limited has licensed Triple P International Pty Ltd to disseminate the program worldwide. Royalties stemming from this dissemination activity are distributed to the Parenting and Family Support Centre, School of Psychology, UQ; Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ; and contributory authors.

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The present study involved an examination of the extent to which a wide range of child, parent, family, and program-related factors predicted child behavior and parenting outcomes after participation in an 8-session online version of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. Participants were mothers and fathers of 97 children aged between 3 and 8 years displaying elevated levels of disruptive behavior problems. For both mothers and fathers, poorer child behavior outcomes at postintervention were predicted by the number of sessions of the intervention completed by the family.

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This pilot study aimed to compare the efficacy of a regular offering of the group-delivered Triple P-Positive Parenting Program for child behavior problems with an enhanced version tailored to promote child emotion competence. Families of children between ages 3 and 6 years displaying early-onset conduct problems were randomly assigned to Group Triple P (GTP; final n = 18) or Emotion Enhanced Triple P (EETP; final n = 18), in which parents were encouraged to incorporate emotion labels and causes and to coach emotion competence during discussions of everyday emotional experiences with their child. Compared with parents who received GTP, parents who received EETP increased their discussion of emotion labels and emotion causes in conversations with their child at postintervention, but this advantage was lost by the 4-month follow-up.

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A noninferiority randomized trial design compared the efficacy of two self-help variants of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program: an online version and a self-help workbook. We randomly assigned families of 193 children displaying early onset disruptive behavior difficulties to the online (N = 97) or workbook (N = 96) interventions. Parents completed questionnaire measures of child behavior, parenting, child maltreatment risk, personal adjustment and relationship quality at pre- and post-intervention and again at 6-month follow up.

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Objective: The present study investigated the longitudinal relationships between inattention, phonological processing and word reading across the first 2 years of formal reading instruction.

Method: In all, 136 school entrants were administered measures of letter knowledge, phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming, and word reading at the start and end of their 1st year of school, and the end of their 2nd year, while teachers completed rating scales of inattention.

Results: School entry inattentiveness predicted unique variance in word reading at the end of first grade, after controlling for verbal ability, letter knowledge, and phonological processing.

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The present article used data from a community sample of primary caregivers of children between 4 and 7 years old to investigate the prevalence and correlates of emotional symptoms in young children transitioning to elementary school. Mothers (n = 3,483) and fathers (n = 1,019) living in metropolitan areas of eastern Australia participated in a telephone survey of parenting practices and child behavioral and emotional problems. Fifteen percent of mothers and 12% of fathers reported that their child showed clinically elevated levels of emotional symptoms.

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Participants were 933 fathers participating in a large-scale household survey of parenting practices in Queensland Australia. Although the majority of fathers reported having few problems with their children, a significant minority reported behavioral and emotional problems and 5% reported that their child showed a potentially problematic level of oppositional and defiant behavior. Reports of child problems were associated with fathers' levels of personal stress and socioeconomic disadvantage.

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